by Eric Warren
“Dammit,” he said, turning his back to her so he could stare through the glass at the gate. “And if I stop her, she’ll never stop resenting me for it.”
“Probably not.” She wasn’t sure what to say to him. Blu coming with them wasn’t necessarily the best idea, but she had to admit she was happy she didn’t have to say goodbye. Arista only hoped she could keep her safe until they had destroyed Charlie.
“Well,” David said after a long period of silence. “I guess that’s that.” He turned back to her. “We should be ready to go in about an hour or so. You ready?”
She nodded again. “Ready.”
EIGHT
The gate hummed to life in front of them, giving off static electricity all over the room. Arista hadn’t cut her hair in months and for the first time in her life it was close to reaching her shoulders. But now stray strands began to stand on their ends, reaching for the sky in some kind of worship of the electron god.
“Are you sure?” she asked Frees. “The other gates didn’t do this.”
“I’m ninety-nine percent sure. We have the proper coordinates from Blu and all the stats look good. The air is just electrified because it’s so much bigger here. It will get us to the other side.”
“Okay, but if my molecules get scrambled crossing dimensions because you forgot to move a decimal point I’m not going to be in a very good mood.”
Frees took one step to his left. “Noted.”
Arista turned to see Blu hugging her father. An old pack hung off one shoulder as she leaned into him. Arista couldn’t quite tell but she seemed to be crying as she held on, neither of them wanting to let go. She turned away to give them privacy and her eyes found Frees looking at them. “Don’t stare,” she said. “It’s rude.”
“I just hope nothing happens to her,” he replied.
“We’ll have to make sure it won’t,” she replied. Seeing Blu’s pack reminded Arista to double-check she had everything she needed. The key was safely stored within her arm, though she hadn’t yet tried to turn it on. The movement of placing her fingers together like that freaked her out too much. Jennings had provided both her and Frees with spare sidearms, as well as a hypertaser, which Arista had stuffed in her back pocket. She’d considered taking an arsenal of weapons back with them, but she didn’t want to try and cart around a pallet of destructive devices. It was more important they travel light and remain mobile. Both she and Blu had eaten a good meal and Blu had packed a dozen of those energy bars she loved. Frees told her he was at seventy-two percent charge which should be plenty to accomplish their mission, barring any more injuries to his superstructure. They were as ready as they could be.
Blu finally let go of her father’s neck and whispered something to him, their respective arms falling to their sides. He seemed composed for someone who was never going to see his daughter again, but then again David wasn’t big on emotion. Perhaps this was just how he grieved.
A bevy of workers stood around the gate, some monitoring the gate itself and others stationed at emergency controls, in case something went wrong. What would these people do with this technology once they were gone? Would they use it to better the human race? Or would they revert back to their baser instincts? The thought that they should destroy the gate after they passed through it crossed Arista’s mind yet again.
“I don’t guess you have any of those energy drives left, do you?” she asked Frees, keeping her voice light as if she was joking.
“Arista,” he warned.
“Yeah, yeah, I know. Trust them. They know what they’re doing.”
“David won’t let it get out of control. He’s got all the information. If anything starts to go wrong, he can shut the whole thing down, for good.”
“I just…ugh, I just hope we’re making the right decision,” she said. Her entire midsection fluttered with an anxiousness.
“Okay.” Blu came up beside them, her eyes teary but her face resolute. “Ready.”
Arista turned to her. “You’re sure? Last chance.”
She nodded. “I’m sure. We do this together. It’s time to go get your world back.”
David had appeared behind them. “Good luck, I hope you find yourself where you need to be,” he said, sticking out his hand.
She took it, relishing its warmth and roughness one last time. “Thank you. For everything.”
“Go do what you have to do. And make your lives worthwhile,” he said, his eyes shimmering. He stuck out a hand for Frees when Arista had let go.
Frees took it gingerly in his human hand and instead of shaking gave it a soft squeeze. “You have proven yourself to be a fine and capable human,” Frees said. “Thank you.”
David glanced at each of them in turn again, his eyes lingering on his daughter before he returned to the control panel. “Full initiation,” he said. “In ten seconds!”
The humming from the gate grew louder, reverberating throughout the space like wind through a crack in a wall. Under them the floor rumbled as if some great creature beneath the building was stirring for the first time. Arista tried to calm herself. If something went wrong and they didn’t end up where they were supposed to, they were to return through the aperture before it could close. But somehow Arista felt like they might not get that chance.
“Five seconds!” David yelled, the humming growing only louder.
Arista couldn’t stop her heart from hammering as she stared at the giant gate. What if Blu’s calculations were off? What if they ended up in a universe where the Earth never existed at all? She could only hope that if they weren’t going home then death would at least be quick. She wasn’t sure she could handle prolonged torture by whatever else could be on the other side.
Without thinking about it, she took Frees’ hand in her own and took two deep breaths. She could do this.
“Full initiation now!” David yelled. Arista took Blu’s hand in her artificial one, noting how clammy her palm was.
The gate surged to life and the blank space inside the gate itself faded from clear to white to a light gray. The surface of the gate flowed and undulated like the surface of a pool as David yelled something else she could barely hear. Arista turned to him, looking for confirmation and when he nodded, she took a step forward. Frees and Blu followed suit and she tightened her grip on their hands, not wanting to lose them in the process. They weren’t getting separated in the multiverse.
“Ready?” she yelled out to both of them.
“Ready!” they replied at the same time.
The surface of the gate beckoned her, just like all the others.
Arista closed her eyes and took one more step.
NINE
She had a hard time holding on, but she wasn’t about to let go. Not while they were in the middle of the fog, as she called it. Sometimes it parted easily and sometimes it was like trying to push through molasses. This was the latter. Arista realized she hadn’t been awake when they’d come through the last gate and she wasn’t quite familiar with how dimensional travel might differ from regular teleportation. It took every muscle in her legs to propel herself forward and it seemed despite his strength, Frees was having just as hard of a time. She couldn’t see him, only his hand as it held hers, but she could feel the pull of his arm and he wasn’t gaining any distance on her. Neither was Blu. All three of them seemed to be pushing through at the same rate, no matter how hard they tried.
Just when she felt she couldn’t push any harder the fog moved to the side and she fell, face first toward the ground. Arista let go with her hands and threw them out in front to break her fall. She hit the ground with a thud, two similar thuds landing on either side of her. Arista checked to make sure there wasn’t any lingering damage and rolled toward Blu, staring at the gate suspended four feet off the ground.
“I guess that’s my fault,” Blu groaned. “I didn’t make the proper adjustment for gravity.” She glanced around. “Does gravity work differently here?”
“Arista?” Frees aske
d.
She turned to him, he’d pushed into a sitting position. “I’m fine,” she said. “Are we…?” Glancing around she gasped at what she saw, scrambling to her feet as fast as she could.
They were back in the colony, in the same room they’d left the first time. David’s gate was still on the back wall, though parts of the frame had been damaged and hung at odd angles. The gray portal through which they’d arrived sat right in front of the gate, just enough so it seemed to hang in mid-air, still undulating.
The rest of the room was a mess. All around them lay rotting human corpses, most having decayed a good deal. Arista approached the main control panel system for the gate, recognizing the uniform on the near-skeleton that was crumpled up against the console.
“It’s McCulluh,” Arista said, standing back as if getting too close might infect her with some unknown disease. She couldn’t quite tell what had killed him, only that no one had been left to move the body or give it any proper respect.
“Here are the other gate scientists,” Frees said, going from body to body. They had been the team that had helped this world’s David develop and build the gate. And this is how they had died. Had Charlie killed every human as soon as he’d returned? Had any, including Jessika, managed to escape? Or had it just been a nonstop bloodbath? Now that she was paying attention there was a lot of dark, dried blood on the floor and walls. It seemed whatever he had done, it had been a brutal affair.
“Look,” Frees said, pointing to the far wall.
“Is that—?” Blu asked.
“—the front of the subway train,” Arista said. Skid marks were present on the ground where the train had hit the metal flooring and skidded across the wide space, eventually embedding itself into the side wall and collapsing at an angle. The entire thing was burnt out like it had been on fire and even more human bodies littered the ground around it. Arista ran over to the train itself, inspecting the compartment. All she remembered from the subway accident was the explosion, and now she saw why. Crates of spent weapons and ammunition had been stored in the train itself, and had all probably ignited at the same time when the gate closed, slicing the train in two. It probably arrived on fire at forty miles per hour and slammed into the side wall where it burned until there was nothing left for the fire to consume. It was a wonder it didn’t ignite the entire colony.
“I’m going out on a limb here and saying this isn’t right,” Blu said. “By the looks on your faces this isn’t what you were expecting.”
“No,” Arista said, “The problem is we did make it. It’s just Charlie was more ruthless than even I gave him credit for. He might not have left anyone alive in here. There might not be any humans left on this planet to save.”
“What does that mean?” Blu said. “What do we do? Do we go back?” She glanced at the gate.
Arista shook her head. “No, it doesn’t change our mission. We still have Frees’ people to consider. Just keep in mind you might be only one of two humans on the planet now.”
“It sounds very…lonely,” Blu said.
“You have no idea,” Arista replied. She continued inspecting the train car for anything of value, but it seemed all of it had burned up either in the explosion or the crash.
“I don’t understand,” Blu said. “If Charlie was inside the digital circuits of the train when it came through, wouldn’t it have killed him as soon as it burned up?”
“If he stayed in one place, yes,” Arista said. “But I’ve never known another machine to body jump like he does. It’s his specialty. And I guarantee he jumped as soon as he crossed that threshold.”
Frees came up next to her and helped her move a piece of sheet metal that had collapsed when the train fell over. Underneath was a husk; his head complete with three holes. “This must have been his first avatar,” Frees said, staring at the machine.
“I didn’t think there were any machines in the human colony,” Blu said.
“There weren’t any with the ability to gain sentience,” Arista said. “They’d clamped off that ability. Maybe he found a way around it. Or maybe he got into another system. He seemed to move easily from system to system back in Echo’s tower, he might have learned how to navigate his consciousness without needing to anchor somewhere. He just pulls the entire thing with him wherever he goes.”
“And that might be a function of him sitting inside my head for so long,” Frees said. “Whatever the reason, it means he’s much more dangerous now. Untethered, it’s going to be impossible to get him to stay in one body long enough for Arista to kill him.”
“Let’s worry about that later,” she said. “Can you get a network connection?”
“Not from here,” he said. “Either its down or we’re too deep.”
“Or all the satellites are gone,” Arista said under her breath.
Blu turned back to the gate which was still open. “I wonder how long before they shut it down.”
“I don’t know, but we can’t stay here very long, we need to figure out what’s going on.” Arista sniffed the air, it was dank and musty, like no one had been here for a while. Which was good news for them. The colony had a natural dampener built into it, so unless Charlie had stationed someone here—which was possible—he might not know about them yet. Hopefully he thought Arista and Frees were stuck in that other universe with no way home. Surprise would be their greatest weapon. “We should make our way to the gate room, see if any of the other gates are still working,” Arista said. Her eyes lingered on Blu a moment, who seemed to be stuck staring at the portal. “Is everything okay?”
“I did it,” Blu said. “I actually did it.”
“You did,” Arista said, cursing herself for not congratulating Blu sooner. If not for her calculations they never would have made it back here. But she couldn’t congratulate her now, could she? It would seem disingenuous. “Thank you.”
Blu turned to her smiling. “You’re welcome. Want an energy bar?”
“We just got here. You need to ration those things. But we’ll check the kitchens before we leave. They might have something useful.”
“Arista,” Frees called. He’d gone off on his own, examining all the bodies and anything else he could find in the room. She trotted over to him. “I haven’t seen your mother’s body. She’s not in here.”
Arista exhaled. “That’s a relief.” She hadn’t wanted to even consider it.
“Also, Max’s body is gone,” he said.
“Well, that makes sense, doesn’t it? They wouldn’t leave her here. I mean it was, what, four days between when we got blown through the gate and when they opened it again. They probably recycled her like all the other husks when they go offline. I’m assuming all this,” she gestured to all the bodies, “happened soon after Charlie returned.”
“You’re right, I just wanted—I wanted to give her a proper burial.”
“Let’s worry about that after we’re done with what we came to do. Is your comm working? Try Jill.”
He tapped the side of his head, activating his internal comm. “I’m not getting a comm signal either. We need to leave the colony or at least get to where there is less interference.”
“Uh, guys,” Blu said, still staring at the portal. It began to undulate faster.
“What’s happening?” Arista asked, returning to Blu. “Is it closing?”
“I don’t think so,” Frees said, joining them. “It doesn’t look like that when it closes, it looks like that when someone comes through.”
The surface undulated faster. Arista wasn’t sure what to expect, but she pulled the weapon Jennings had given her out anyway, brandishing it at the middle of the portal. There was a flash of white light and a figure fell forward, just as they had done, landing with a thump on the ground. The portal dissipated into nothingness. It was closed.
Arista kept her weapon trained on the figure, who moaned on the ground.
“Wait!” Blu said. “Don’t!” She ran up to the figure, standing directly in Arista
’s line of sight.
“Move, I don’t have a clear shot!” she said. The last thing they needed was some radical who’d managed to subvert David’s security screwing everything up for them.
“And you’re not going to get one.” Blu turned around as the figure stood behind her.
Arista dropped her weapon. It was David.
TEN
“David?” It took Arista a moment to comprehend what she was seeing. David had come through the gate. The gate was gone. “What…?” she began, unable to finish the sentence.
“I’m sorry,” David said. “But when I saw the three of you disappear through the gate I couldn’t stay behind. We were preparing to shut down the gate and all I could think about was how I’d never see my daughter again.” His face was awash in emotion, more than she’d ever seen from the man.
“Did you know?” she asked, her voice more accusatory than she’d intended. “When you asked me if Blu had made up her mind? Did you already know you weren’t going to stay?”
He dropped his eyes, removing his glasses. “I thought I could be strong enough. I didn’t plan this if that’s what you’re asking. But I saw a future without my daughter and I couldn’t…” He caught her gaze again and his eyes swam with tears.
“You don’t have a way back,” Frees stated.
He wiped his eyes and replaced his glasses. “One-way trip. But that’s okay.”
Blu only stared at him. “Dad…”
He put his hands on her shoulders, reassuring her. “It’s okay, Bloom.”
“No, it isn’t,” she said more forcefully. “If something happens to you it’s my fault because you came after me.”
“This was my decision. Just like when you made yours. You’re not responsible for what happens to me, okay?”
She seemed to accept it, but Arista sensed hesitation within her somewhere. Blu grabbed onto his waist and squeezed him as if she hadn’t seen him in years. He held her for a moment before they both broke contact again. “I’m glad you’re here,” she whispered.